Vincent Van Gogh Quotes - Page 16

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The sight of stars always sets me dreaming just as naively as those black dots on a map set me dreaming of towns and villages. Why should these points of light in the firmament, I wonder, be less accessible than the dark ones on the map of France? We take a train to go to Torascon or Roven and we take death to a star.

Vincent Van Gogh

Dream, Stars, Dark

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The more ugly, old, nasty, ill, and poor I become the more I want to get my own back by producing vibrant, well-arranged, radiant colour.

Vincent Van Gogh

Ugly, Want, Nasty

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When I have a model who is quiet and steady and with whom I am acquainted, then I draw repeatedly 'til there is one drawing that is different from the rest, which does not look like an ordinary study, but more typical and with more feeling.

Vincent Van Gogh

Drawing, Feelings, Typical

Vincent van Gogh, Anthon Gerhard Alexander Rappard (ridder van), Anthon van Rappard (1936). “Letters to an artist: from Vincent van Gogh to Anton ridder van Rappard, 1881-1885”

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I had a new idea in my head... this time it's just simply my bedroom, only here colour is to do everything, and, giving by its simplification a grander style to things, is to be suggestive here of rest or of sleep in general. In a word, to look at the picture ought to rest the brain or rather the imagination.

Vincent Van Gogh

Sleep, Ideas, Giving

Vincent van Gogh, Mark Roskill (1997). “The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh”, p.297, Simon and Schuster

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Oh! I must somehow manage to do a figure in a few strokes.

Vincent Van Gogh

Painting, Figures, Strokes

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I was certainly going the right way for a stroke when I left Paris. I paid for it nicely afterwards! When I stopped drinking, when I stopped smoking so much, when I began to think again instead of trying not to think - Good Lord, the depression and the prostration of it! Work in these magnificent natural surroundings (Arles) has restored my morale, but even now some efforts are too much for me: my strength fails me.

Vincent Van Gogh

Drinking, Thinking, Paris

Vincent van Gogh, Martin Bailey (1990). “Vicent van Gogh, letters from Provence”, Editorial Biblos

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That this awareness of my own fallibility will prevent me from making many mistakes doesn't alter the fact that I'm bound to make a great many mistakes anyway. But if we fall, we get up again!

Vincent Van Gogh

Mistake, Fall, Facts

Vincent van Gogh (2009). “Saint-Rémy-de-Provence - Auvers-sur-Oise, 1889-1890, [772-902]”

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In the fullness of artistic life there is, and remains, and will always come back at times, that homesick longing for the truly ideal life that can never come true.

Vincent Van Gogh

Artistic Life, Homesick, Longing

Vincent van Gogh (1971). “Van Gogh's "diary"; the artist's life in his own words and art”

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Painting it was hard graft. There are one and a half large tubes of white in the ground - yet that ground is very dark.

Vincent Van Gogh

Dark, White, Half

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To save a life is a real and beautiful thing. To make a home for the homeless, yes, it is a thing that must be good; whatever the world may say, it cannot be wrong.

Vincent Van Gogh

Beautiful, Real, Home

Vincent van Gogh, Vincent Willem Gogh (1927). “The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh to His Brother, 1872-1886: With a Memoir by His Sister-in-law, J. Van Gogh-Bonger ...”

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Ah! My dear friend painting is to us what the music of Berlioz and Wagner was before us - a consolatory art for sore hearts! And yet there are only a few like you and me who feel it!!!

Vincent Van Gogh

Art, Painting, Like You

Vincent van Gogh, Martin Bailey (1990). “Vicent van Gogh, letters from Provence”, Editorial Biblos

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One begins by plaguing oneself to no purpose in order to be true to nature, and one concludes by working quietly from one's own palette alone, and then nature is the result.

Vincent Van Gogh

Order, Purpose, Results

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My aim in life is to make pictures and drawings, as many and as well as I can; then, at the end of my life... looking back with love and tender regret, and thinking, 'Oh, the pictures I might have made!'

Vincent Van Gogh

Regret, Thinking, Drawing

Vincent van Gogh (2014). “Delphi Complete Works of Vincent van Gogh (Illustrated)”, p.2172, Delphi Classics

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I am working with the enthusiasm of a man from Marseilles eating bouillabaisse, which shouldn't come as a surprise to you because I am busy painting huge sunflowers.

Vincent Van Gogh

Men, Sunflower, Enthusiasm

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It may be true that there is no God here, but there must be one not far off, and at such a moment one feels His presence; which comes to the same as saying (and I readily give this sincere profession of faith): I believe in God, and that it is His wi

Vincent Van Gogh

Believe, Giving, May

Vincent van Gogh (1959). “Complete Letters: With Reproductions of All the Drawings in the Correspondence”

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I believe that one thinks much more soundly if the thoughts arise from direct contact with things, than if one looks at things with the aim of finding this or that in them.

Vincent Van Gogh

Believe, Thinking, Looks

H. R. Graetz, Vincent van Gogh (1963). “The Symbolic Language of Vincent Van Gogh”, London, Hudson

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It must be a good thing to die conscious of having performed some real good, and to know that by this work one will live, at least in the memory of some, and will have left a good example to those that come after. A work that is good-it may not be eternal, but the thought expressed in it is, and the work itself will certainly remain in existence for a long, long time; and if afterwards others arise, they can do no better than follow in the footsteps of such predecessors and do their work in the same way.

Vincent Van Gogh

Memories, Real, Long

Vincent van Gogh, Vincent Willem Gogh (1927). “The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh to His Brother, 1872-1886: With a Memoir by His Sister-in-law, J. Van Gogh-Bonger ...”

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Well, I dare not allow myself any illusions, and I am afraid it may never happen that Father and Mother will really appreciate my art. It is not their fault; we do not see the same things with the same eyes, or have the same thoughts raised in us by them. They will never be able to understand what painting is.

Vincent Van Gogh

Mother, Art, Father

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It is the painting that makes me so happy these days.

Vincent Van Gogh

Art, Painting, These Days

Vincent van Gogh (2014). “Delphi Complete Works of Vincent van Gogh (Illustrated)”, p.1662, Delphi Classics

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a likeness different from the products of the God-fearing photographer.

Vincent Van Gogh

Different, Photographer, Realism

Vincent van Gogh (2014). “Delphi Complete Works of Vincent van Gogh (Illustrated)”, p.2765, Delphi Classics

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Just dash something down if you see a blank canvas staring at you with a certain imbecility. You do not know how paralyzing it is, that staring of a blank canvas which says to the painter: you don't know anything.

Vincent Van Gogh

Insecurity, Canvas, Blank

Vincent van Gogh, Vincent Willem Gogh (1927). “The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh to His Brother, 1872-1886: With a Memoir by His Sister-in-law, J. Van Gogh-Bonger ...”

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What is true is that I have at times earned my own crust of bread, and at other times a friend has given it to me out of the goodness of his heart. I have lived whatever way I could, for better or for worse, taking things just as they came.

Vincent Van Gogh

Heart, Way, Bread

Vincent van Gogh, Victoria Charles (2014). “Vincent van Gogh”, p.126, Parkstone International

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But after all I find in my work an echo of what struck me. I see that nature has told me something, has spoken to me, and that I have put it down in shorthand. In my shorthand there may be words that cannot be deciphered. There may be mistakes or gap

Vincent Van Gogh

Mistake, Echoes, May

Vincent van Gogh, Mark Roskill (1997). “The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh”, p.167, Simon and Schuster

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That I was not suited to commerce or academic study in no way proves that I should also be unfit to be a painter.

Vincent Van Gogh

Way, Study, Academic

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If you work diligently... without saying to yourself beforehand, 'I want to make this or that,' if you work as though you were making a pair of shoes, without artistic preoccupation, you will not always find you do well. But the days you least expect it, you will find a subject which holds its own with the work of those who have gone before.

Vincent Van Gogh

Shoes, Gone, Want

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Born: March 30, 1853
Died: July 29, 1890
Occupation: Painter
Cite this Page: Citation

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